Petitioner inmate appealed a denial by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus contending that the buttons worn by the deceased individual's family members at his trial created an unreasonable risk of impermissible factors coming into play ...

Petitioner was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to be executed for intentionally starting an apartment fire that killed a young girl. Following a series of unsuccessful appeals in the Ohio state courts, he petitioned the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio at Cleveland for a writ of ...

Plaintiff, a suspect for a traffic violation, brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after he was injured at the conclusion of a high speed chase. Defendants, a deputy and a sergeant of a county sheriff's department, appealed from an order of the United States District Court for the Northern ...

Petitioner inmate appealed a judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that it was untimely under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1).

The inmate was convicted and sentenced to death for beating the victim ...

Defendant was convicted by a jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri of conspiring to distribute more than 100 kilograms of marijuana. On appeal, defendant argued his conviction should have been vacated because the district court violated his Sixth Amendment right to be represented ...

Petitioner alien filed a petition of review after the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed the orders entered by an immigration judge (IJ) in his case. The IJ had denied the alien's request for a continuance and had entered a removal order against him. The alien had sought to continue ...

Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri for one count of possessing pseudoephedrine knowing, or with reasonable cause to believe, that it would be used to manufacture methamphetamine, 21 U.S.C. § 841(c)(2).

Defendant argued that the trial court abused ...

After he was convicted of conspiracy to kill United States nationals, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to destroy buildings and property of the United States, and 18 counts of perjury, defendant moved for a new trial under Fed. R. Crim. P. 33 based on the government's failure to timely disclose ...

Plaintiff prisoner brought an action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against defendant public officials to obtain access to DNA testing of biological evidence used eight years before in his felony murder trial. The officials filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim for which relief could ...

Defendant pleaded guilty to using a telephone to facilitate drug trafficking. The court set forth a sentence and the reasons for the sentence it imposed.

Defendant was indicted along with 18 others for conspiring to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine. The court considered the factors set forth in ...

Petitioner state inmate appealed a judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, which denied the inmate's application for habeas corpus relief against respondent from his state court conviction for first degree murder and a sentence of death. The state courts had affirmed the conviction ...

Defendant appealed from the judgment of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, at Roanoke, convicting him of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Defendant sought to invoke an affirmative defense of "innocent possession," claiming that 18 U.S.C.S. § 922(g)(1) did not apply when ...

In this case, Coffey objected to the district court increasing his mandatory guidelines sentence on the basis of the evidence before it, asserting that it was insufficient to establish any drug quantity. This is precisely what Justice Stevens’s majority opinion in Booker found to be problematic with the guidelines: that ...

Following a bench trial, the United States District Court for the District of Alaska convicted defendant of maintaining a place for the manufacture of controlled substances, attempting to manufacture methamphetamine, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and criminal forfeiture. Defendant appealed.

Defendant asserted the trial court erred in ...

The United States District Court for the District of Oregon convicted defendant of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and conspiracy to distribute various drugs, distribution of a certain drug, and possession with intent to distribute those drugs. The district court denied defendant's pretrial motion to suppress certain evidence. ...

In this case, the Third Circuit reversed a ruling by Judge Bissell of the D.N.J. which granted a defense attorney’s motion to quash a grand jury subpoena on the grounds of the attorney-client privilege. In so ruling, the district court had rejected the Government’s argument that the attorney client privilege ...

Here the Court held that “Nothing in Crawford [v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004)] requires us to alter our previous conclusion that there is no Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause right at sentencing.”.

Defendant pled guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of ...

Defendant pled guilty to conspiracy to make and possess counterfeit commercial checks. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas sentenced defendant to time served (approximately six months) and ordered him to pay $ 26,400 in restitution. Defendant appealed the restitution order, arguing that it violated his ...

In this case, the Court affirmed the continuing validity of using acquitted conduct to determine a defendant's sentence post-Booker, even though the use of such factors at sentencing led to an increase in one defendant's Guideline sentence of more than 25 years. The Court stated:

"The district court found for ...

Triple murderer Christopher Scarver – best known as the inmate who murdered Jeffrey Dahmer – filed this lawsuit, claiming that conditions in Wisconsin’s most secure prison (known as the “Supermax”) amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed. ...

In yet another case that involved still another reversal of a Ninth Circuit decision, a unanimous Supreme Court held that California prisoner Reginald Chavis' Federal habeas claim fell outside the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's (AEDPA) one year statute of limitations. The Court found that Chavis' three year delay ...

Here a unanimous Court held that the Eleventh Circuit had erred when it dismissed, on sovereign immunity grounds, a lawsuit brought by a paraplegic inmate who claimed that prison officials had violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In this brief and far from momentous ruling, the Supreme ...

In its latest attempt to clarify its own death penalty jurisprudence, the Supreme Court chose this highly fact-specific and technical case to establish a new and somewhat simplistic rule for capital cases which states: “An invalidated sentencing factor (whether an eligibility factor or not) will render the sentence unconstitutional by ...

Here a unanimous court reversed the Ninth Circuit’s determination that a California trial court had unreasonably dismissed a Batson challenge to the striking of an African-American juror by substituting its evaluation of the record for the state court's.

In this case, a unanimous Supreme Court reversed another decision of the ...

Defendant, a pretrial detainee, was indicted on several terrorism-related counts, including conspiracy to provide, and with providing, material support and resources to terrorists and to a certain foreign terrorist organization. The government imposed special administrative measures (SAMs) on defendant that modified certain aspects of his confinement. Defendant filed a motion ...

Amending and supplementing decision previously reported at 426 F.3d 1226 (9th Cir. Oct. 24, 2005); but this decision was subsequently reversed by an en banc decision reported at 481 F.3d 1188 (9th Cir. April 2, 2007) (2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 7558).

Defendant sought review of a judgment from the United ...

In reviewing the impact of U.S. v. Booker on sentencing, the Court observed that: "The mandatory nature of the Guidelines has produced particular results which led trial judges to express that the sentences imposed were unjust, grossly unfair, or disproportionate to the crime committed, and the judges would otherwise have ...

In this case, the First Circuit addressed the Government’s interlocutory appeal from Judge Gertner’s partial allowance of the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence in U.S. v. Dessesaure, 314 F. Supp. 2d 81 (D. Mass. 2004) (P&J, 04/19/04) (Dessesaure I) and her denial of the prosecution's motion for reconsideration.; U.S. v. ...

Defendant county board of elections appealed from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York granting plaintiff voters' motion for a preliminary injunction forbidding the county board of elections from certifying election results without tallying certain absentee ballots.

Plaintiff voters claimed that defendant ...

In an issue of first impression for the Sixth Circuit, the Court was called upon to reconcile two conflicting doctrines of Fourth Amendment law. The Leon good faith doctrine (U.S. v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S. Ct. 3405, 82 L. Ed. 2d 677 (1984)), allows a court to avoid ...

Defendant's sentence on drug related charges is vacated and remanded for reconsideration where the district court erred in concluding that Blakely required the government to charge in an indictment, and prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, that defendant satisfied the requirements for designation as a career offender under ...

Plaintiff former girlfriend sought review of a decision of the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, which dismissed her complaint against defendant former boyfriend. The complain sought compensation for invasion of privacy injuries the girlfriend allegedly sustained when the boyfriend distributed a videotape he had secretly ...

As expected, the Tenth Circuit rejected a series of challenges to the wisdom, fairness and constitutionality of mandatory minimum sentences that were first raised by Judge Cassell in a decision that evoked wide publicity and debate.

In November, 2004, Judge Paul Cassell of the D.Utah, an appointee of President Bush ...